Encore - performing arts centre

Abstract:

"The World Bank's central mission is to fight poverty. Over 2 billion people around the world live in poverty. With such pressing concerns, why bother about arts and culture: because we must accept the importance of social well-being, educational and intellectual fulfilment. Culture is profoundly important. We need to understand the cultural dimension of development: for example effective educational projects must take into account the cultural expression and language of the community. We have moved from involvement solely with financial capital to a financial being balanced with social and structural factors, a more holistic view that incorporates lending criteria that accommodate 'social capital'. We will do our utmost to make a difference. Bank finance in culture is truly complementary to that of others. A Kenyan proverb displayed at the Museum of Natural History in New York reads: "Let us treat nature well. It was not given to us by out fathers but it was lent to us by our children". I suggest we insert 'cultural heritage' for nature." Ian Johnson - Vice President Environmentally and Socially Sustainable Development, The World Bank (http:\www.arts&culture trust.htm) The Inner City of Pretoria is rapidly degrading. Businesses are moving out and poorer people are moving in. To create a place for real people, more than just economic stability is needed. At the Vienna Architecture Conference in 1993 "The End of Architecture?" Zaha Hadid stated: " Being an architect today one is faced with the challenge of a profession torn in two distinct aspects. On the one hand architecture became pure technique, as if it were a branch of engineering; on the other hand, it becomes image production, as if it were a branch of advertising."(Noever, 1992; 27) The theme at the conference alluded to the fact that architecture for architecture's sake no longer predominates, and it now seems that only fashion is being rewarded. Architecture for architecture's sake cannot be the solution, cannot be the antidote to fashion; only a social purpose to architecture, publicly formulated, can be such an antidote. There can be no great architecture without a social programme. A visionary architecture has to take part in a political vision, and its reality presupposes a political process, which puts a new architecture on the agenda and thus transforms the profession into a movement with new aims and inspirations. What matters to the inhabitants of the Inner City, apart from the fundamentals for physical survival, is the quality of buildings and the in-between spaces that they generate. Keeping this in mind one should realise that designing outside spaces is as important as designing buildings. There has always been a distinction between interior and exterior space, with architects and interior architects responsible for the latter and landscape architects responsible for the first. If one intends to create a real people's place there should be a fusion between these two elements. They should be perceived as spaces created for people, without drawing a distinction between inside and outside. This is one of the elements which the city lacks most. The open spaces in the Berea precinct are either not planned or not utilised in the way they were planned. Today cities may be increasingly sophisticated in meeting technical needs, but now is the time to bring deeper human needs into the brief.